Ping and Walt: The True Story of Mulan
by LovelessNobodyXIII
Summary: An oral history presented by Lemony Snicket recounting the production of the animated classic Mulan. Interviews with the cast, crew, and other people involved that tell a story of love, lust, and bloodshed befitting a movie of such mighty caliber.


PING AND WALT: THE TRUE STORY OF MULAN

Written by Christopher Rangel

(CELEBRATING 3 YEARS OF WINTER LEAVES LIKE A SON IN A PARADE)

(WALT DISNEY stands at the gates of DISNEYWORLD, holding a massive pair of scissors. There is a red ribbon across the entrance.)

WALT DISNEY: Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome… to my world! (He cuts the ribbon and the entire audience applauds.)

(Interviews)

EDDIE MURPHY (Actor, voice of Mushu): Y'know, when Walt Disney approached me to take on one of the leading roles, I was like "Shoot, man, Walt Disney wants ME to be in one of his movies?" That was the moment I knew I'd made it big.

MING-NA WEN (Actress, voice of Mulan): I've always been proud of my Chinese heritage, and when I heard that Walt was making a movie based on my culture, I was as nervous as I was excited.

DONNY OSMOND (Musician): Man, I was really scratching up pennies back in those days. Y'know, seriously, I was just out in the park, singing songs, guitar case open for people to put money into. And I was doing just that when Walt Disney walked by. My rendition of "Fly me to the Moon" moved him to tears, and he looked me in the eye and told me that I absolutely had to do the music in his film.

HAYAO MIYAZAKI (Animator): Disney was a true visionary, and without him I never would have made it to where I am today. But he was also a piece of shit.

LEMONY SNICKET: It has been heralded as the greatest animated film of all time, and many argue that it's the greatest film in general of all time. You know and love the story, but you may not know the story BEHIND the story. It was a story of a man named Ping and a man named Walt. I'm Lemony Snicket, and you're watching _The True Story of Mulan_. (Intro Music: "China Girl" by David Bowie plays over the intro sequence).

LEMONY: The year was 1955. Walt Disney and his humble animation company had just found some minor success with their first animated film, _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves_. But minor success was still success, and it had managed to gain a cult following.

GARY BROOKER (Lead singer of the band PROCOL HARUM): I mean, I was ten years old at the time, and back then all movies were all real people all the time. Then my buddy, Douglas Adams, drops by my house and says, "You gotta see this new film. The people are made of ink!"

MARK TWAIN (Writer): It was truly eye opening. Before that, I thought ink could only be used to write words. Turned out, it could be used to draw pictures as well!

ADOLF HITLER (Hitler): Mulan is really popular these days. A lot of people really like it. But for me, there will never be another _Snow White and the Seven Dwarves_.

LEMONY: After the release of _Snow White_, Walt Disney was under a lot of pressure to come up with something to surpass what he had created, and he spent many nights in bars and clubs looking for inspiration.

DAVID BOWIE (Singer): I remember, one night, way back in the day, I was out in the local bar, I think it was called "The Faint of Hearts", and there was this bloke there scribbling away on a piece of paper. I turned to Mick Ronson and asked "Who the hell is that guy?" and he responded "Holy shit, that's Walt Disney!" "Walt _Who?" _I asked. And Mick just turned to me and said "He's the guy that made _Snow White_!" Now I hadn't seen that movie; you have to remember, Walt Disney was very obscure back then. The sort of thing that only the cool people knew about. I always considered myself to be one of the "Cool people", so I decided to approach him and introduce myself. He told me to fuck off, that he was busy, so I ordered him a beer. He accepted it, took a sip, then spat it out at me. Needless to say I got the message.

MICHAEL EISNER: We'd been seeing Walt less and less as the days went on, and we were all growing very worried. Y'know, we had all placed our lives in the palm of this guy's hands, and if he wasn't going to have an idea for a new movie, how the hell were we going to make more money? So one day, my wife and I are watching television in our living room, and there's a "SNAP" from the kitchen. Mouse trap caught a mouse, you know. And my wife went to throw it in the garbage, but I said "WAIT!" and stopped her, held onto that mouse. The next day I brought that mouse in and showed it to Walt. He simply pointed at it and said "Mickey Mouse!" and got right to work.

LEMONY: Walt Disney got to work on the pilot, _Steamboat Willie_, and next thing he knew he had a three season deal with CBS.

HAYAO MIYAZAKI: The days of the Mickey Mouse Show were the best days we had as a company. We were all contributing, and all excited to be doing what we were doing. But then everything changed when Quentin Tarentino came walking into the room.

MICHAEL EISNER: I remember the day Quentin Tarentino came in to our office. He just stood there, looking around, with that Tarentino look he has, then he just turns to Walt and says "So, you're just doing television now? That's pretty gay." I said to him, "Hey, that was pretty homophobic, man." He just turns to me and says "What the fuck year is it?" "1963," I said. "Exactly," he said. "What the fuck did you think this was, 2019?"

QUENTIN TARENTINO (Director): I said it was gay because it WAS gay. I mean, you got this guy, makes this one really good, really FANTASTIC movie, and then he just sits on his ass and does shit for television? I mean, come on! He really had to get his head back in the game, which he did. And I'd like to think that I played a big role in that.

HALEY JOEL OSMENT (Actor - Voice of Mickey Mouse): When Quentin Tarentino came into the office just to call Walt gay, Walt took it to heart. After Tarentino left, Walt just whispered the words "I am not gay," then left the office. No one knew where he went, but when he came back he was just bursting to the seams with inspiration.

SAM MALONE (Bartender, _Cheers_): It was just another day at the bar, and this guy walks in. I instantly recognize him as Walt Disney, but I try to keep my cool, you know, because I try to treat my patrons equally. So anyways, he sits next to this cute Chinese girl, and I mean she was _really_ cute, and he starts chatting her up. I would've myself, but you know, something felt kind of… off, you know? And she wasn't my type anyways. But she was Walt's type, alright. They talked and talked, and then when all was said and done, they left the bar together.

MICHAEL EISNER: So the next day, we're all sitting in the office waiting for Walt to come in, waiting for the next big idea. And eventually he comes in, wearing a great big smile on his face. "How's it going man," I asked him. "Great," he said. "I just fucked a guy." Now, we all looked around confusedly, with some half-hearted clapping. We figured that this was an occasion worth clapping for, but we really were not sure. But then it got worse…

HAYAO MIYAZAKI: I was all for celebrating Walt coming out as gay, but then it turned out that that wasn't what was happening at all. He said "I didn't realize it was a he at the time, but I was already naked when he pulled out his wanger, so I decided 'welp, I'm just going for it'". He mentioned that this guy was Chinese, then said "Asians. They all look the same. Can't tell a Chinaman from a Chinawoman." Then he turned to me and said "Ain't that right, my squinty Chinese Nigga?" (A beat). …I'm Japanese.

MICHAEL EISNER: We all looked at each other, just like "Holy shit, we've put our lives in the hands of a racist asshole". But then, our lives were, in fact, in the hands of a racist asshole, so what were we going to go about that? As it turned out, Miyazaki-san had an idea…

KIRYU KAZUMA (Yakuza): I'd just come home from a hard day of Yakuza-ing when I saw a herd of ninjas coming towards my house. I grabbed my shepherd stick, stepped outside, and raised it into the air and said "begone foul beasts!" and the ninjas stopped running, then dispersed into the surrounding city. Satisfied, I stepped back into my house and the phone started to ring. I picked it up, and on the other side was my old friend Hayao Miyazaki, who was living in the United States and doing some animation work for the Disney Company at the time. So I ask "Miyazaki-san, what's up?" and Miyazaki-san says "Walt Disney just called me a 'squinty Chinese Nigga." I said "He called you a WHAT?!" So he says "Ye. Can you and the Yakuza do something about it?" so I said "Yer goddamn fucking right we can do something about that. Yer goddamn fucking right." Then I hung up the phone, cracked open a cold one, threw myself onto the couch and put on an old rerun of "The Shakespeare Chronicles", which was like "Tales from the Crypt", but instead of the Crypt Keeper presenting scary stories, it was old Bill Shakespeare presenting some plays that he had written. It was a good show. I remember 'Macbeth' fondly…

MICHAEL EISNER: Walt Disney had locked himself in his room for days, working on the new movie. Then, one day, he stepped out, bags under his eyes. And someone else stepped out. And someone else. There, right before our eyes, stood Mulan, Mushu, and General Shang. "I only drew one frame", Disney said in terror. "I only drew one fucking frame, and they just stepped out of it." Then his eyes widened and he ran to The Archive, the room where we kept all the old animation reels for our previous projects. I followed him, then watched as he tore through the reels, frame by frame, looking for something. Then he looked up at me and yelled "THEY'RE GONE! THEY'RE ALL GONE!" I asked what he was talking about, and he said "The characters! They're all gone! Where the hell did they go?! Michael, what the fuck have we done?!" By that point, I noticed that the Animated People, the Disnians as these kinds came to be known as, were standing right behind me, saying nothing. They had no voices yet, of course, and Walt knew it. "We've come too far," he said. "We have to see this through." I believe this was one of the main inspirations for the segment where Ariel loses her voice in _The Little Mermaid_, too, which we started working on shortly after _Mulan_…

EDDIE MURPHY: Something we don't talk about a lot: there was only one day of recording, and we all remember it vividly. Walt walked the cast, me, Ming-na, Donny Osmond, and the rest, to the recording booth. There were no lights on inside. Walt just handed us our scripts, opened the door, and said "Good luck." The door locked behind us, and when Walt turned the lights on we saw the three characters from the movie standing before us…

MING-NA WEN: Eddie stood where he was, and I tried my best to keep my cool, stepping back slowly, but then Donny Osmond started freaking the fuck out, leaping for the door and pulling at it, screaming "LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!" And the characters, the Animated People just started walking towards us, slowly. I watched as Mushu wrapped himself around Eddie Murphy's throat and started glowing with this magnificent light. Then Eddie fell to the floor. General Shao stood behind Donny Osmond and wrapped his hands around his neck, and the same thing happened to him. Then Mulan stood in front of me, and the other two stood behind her. They said "She needs your voice," then she wrapped her hands around my neck, and that's the last thing I remember.

DONNY OSMOND: It was terrifying. It was unnatural. Those… people. I was going to call them things, but these days that would be considered racist, ha ha. Those _people_, standing there in three dimensions yet still being perfectly two-dimensional. Two _fucking_ dimensional, ha ha ha ha, and that one stole my voice. I'm still getting it back, years later. Fucking, Jesus fuck, I know you had Eddie Murphy in here a little while before me, Mr. Snicket, and I know he had to HAND WRITE his fucking comments, since he recently gave his voice to fucking DONKEY in the fucking SHREK movie that recently came out. But anyways, these are people, not fucking monsters. Anyways, these _people_ stole our voices, and that was the end of our involvement in the movie. I'd already written the music for the film beforehand, so that was that.

LEMONY SNICKET: The following audio recording is of Walt Disney, recently discovered in The Archive at Disney Studios. It's discovery is what prompted the creation of this documentary.

WALT DISNEY: The movie… it… it animated itself, Ping. The people… they think I'm some sort of animating genius for this film, but I didn't animate it. It animated itself! I drew the fucking characters, I wrote the fucking script, but the characters, they just came alive. They took my script, they took the voices of the actors, and they just made the movie themselves. And then they just left. They just walked out the door. I… don't know if I should keep doing this.

PING: Walt, what are you saying? You have to keep doing this! Animation is in your blood!

WALT: I just don't know if I can anymore…

PING: You're just nervous. I know one thing I can do to ease your nervousness.

WALT: And I know you've got a penis under there.

PING: And I know you like that penis.

WALT: And I know that you're right… (end recording)

MICHAEL EISNER: Long story short, the movie was made. One way or another, it was made, and right from the first screening audiences loved it. In the writer's room we were worried that some of the lines would be considered offensive to Chinese audiences, like the parts where we openly make fun of their belief in the spirits of their ancestors, but everyone loved every frame of the film. But sadly, the more people watched the film, the harder Walt Disney fucked Ping in the ass…

DON VITO CORLEONE (Godfather): I was minding my own fucking business one day when all of a sudden Walt Disney comes into my home with a bag that obviously had a dead body in it. So I steeple my hands on my desk and say "Greetings. How can I help you this lovely afternoon?" And this fucking guy, he's got tears in his eyes. "I need a body… disposed of…" "Oh, so that's a dead body you've got in there", I said, and he said "Yeah, there's a dead body." "Gee, I never would have guessed there was a dead body in that there bodybag." Then I explained to him that if I were to dispose of that body I'd need to hear it's story. So he told it to me. It was some guy named Ping, he assfucked him to death, and that was that. He obviously cared a lot for him, as he was crying as he recounted the tale, and yet the man was dead. I told him I'd dispose of the body, and so I disposed of the body.

MIYAZAKI: Ping's death was the point at which I left the Disney Company, returned to Japan, formed Studio Ghibli, invented Anime, and caused the genesis of the Anime Bois. But just as I returned to Japan, the Yakuza were travelling to America.

EISNER: Yes, I remember the day Walt received his injury. We were working on _The Little Mermaid_, and I stepped into the break room to get myself a cup of coffee. I took a sip of coffee and looked out the window, and all these guys in sunglasses and business suits were stepping into this white car. One of them put a gun into it's holster, and I thought "What the fuck?!" Then I ran back into the animation room, and the first thing I saw was the canvas that Walt had been painting on, which was now splattered in blood. And Walt was lying on the floor, a bullethole right through his chest, bleeding out and unconscious. To this day I have no idea how they got in there.

KIRYU KAZUMA: I pulled the trigger myself. No one fucks with the Japanese. As a matter of fact, I fuck up anyone I know to be racist to anyone. That's just the way I work. That's why I flew all the way to America, just to fuck that fucker up. And I can tell you what his last words were. "Kurt Russell."

KURT RUSSELL: I don't fucking know why his last words were Kurt Russel.

MR. FREEZE: So I was minding my own business in my Freeze Lair when some execs from the Disney Company came in with Walt Disney on a stretcher, grasping for life. They asked if there was anything I could do, and I told them to remove his head. One of them deadass pulled a saw out of their ass and started hacking away at his neck. Once the head was severed, I threw that shit into one of my ice chambers, and there it remains to this very day.

MICHAEL EISNER: We're still waiting for the technology to be right to be able to bring him back, to revive him from this state. But for all intents and purposes, for the present, he is dead. Yet, even though Walt is dead, his ideas remain. There are so many ideas and scripts that he left behind, and we've been using those to make each new movie. And with each new movie… (a smile) …more Disnians come to life.

LEMONY SNICKET: So there you have it. The true story of one of the greatest films of our time. One man's dream led to the creation of a work of art, as well as an entirely new type of person. The Animated People, some of them Disnians, others Pixarians, others Anime Bois, and so on. Living among us in peace and harmony. And yet…

ALFREDO LINGUINI: My first order of business: All Disnians are to leave the country within a week! Je ne veux pas faire ça! C'est le rongeur! Any Disnians who do not leave the country within the week may be detained, shot, or even killed! (See "One Fist Man")

LEMONY: This film is dedicated to everyone affected by the French Disnian Crisis. To anyone watching this, if you can spare any money at all, donate it to the "French Disnian Relief" Charity. Each dollar will help a Disnian refugee find food, shelter, and love in a world that, at times, can be cold and cruel. Thank you for watching, and have a good night.

(End)


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